News

Raising awareness about historically black colleges and universities

By Dana Hull dhull@mercurynews.com

Posted:
02/23/2014 01:09:22 AM PST

Updated:
02/23/2014 01:09:24 AM PST

STANFORD -- Chantal Winston is a junior at Palo Alto's Gunn High School, where she helped to start Gunn's Black Student Union. She's thinking hard about college and spent part of Saturday attending a Black College Awareness Fair on the Stanford University campus.

"I've lived in Palo Alto all my life, and there are not many black students at Gunn," said Chantal. "It would be nice to go to a college or university where there are more people like me."

California is known for Stanford, a host of other elite private universities and the vast University of California and California State University systems. But the Golden State lacks an "HBCU," or Historically Black College and University, and many Bay Area high school students may overlook such colleges when applying to schools. There are 81 private HBCUs, all located east of the Mississippi River. The vast majority are in the South.

For 24 years, the Black College Awareness Fair has been sponsored by the Rho Delta Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., the first sorority founded by black women, at Howard University in 1908.

"We hold this event at Stanford for the exposure," said Saidah Grayson, a Stanford alum and president of the sorority's Rho Delta Omega campus, which is based in Palo Alto. "There are no HBCUs in California. We want to bring young people and their parents to Stanford to learn not just about HBCUs, but also to see the Stanford campus. Simply being on a college campus helps you to think more deeply about attending college yourself."

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Roland Pickens went to Dillard College, an HBCU in New Orleans founded in 1869, and is president of Dillard's San Francisco Bay Area alumni chapter. He said African-American students -- as well as other students--should give black colleges and universities a hard look.

"The average class size is 14 to 1," said Pickens. "There are no (teaching assistants); all of the courses are taught by professors. And not all of the students at Dillard are black: We have several international students, including many from Brazil. When you walk around the Dillard campus, you hear Portuguese."

Pickens said that the bonds he formed at Dillard have lasted a lifetime; his best friends remain his college friends. And interest in Dillard has grown: California sends more students to Dillard than any other state besides Louisiana.

"Interest in Dillard and HBCUs grew when California passed Prop. 209," said Pickens, referring to the 1996 state ballot initiative that prohibited state universities and colleges from considering race in admissions. "I think we had 13 students from the Bay Area in this year's freshman class."

Reginald Braddock attended Tuskegee University in Alabama, where he majored in electrical engineering. He moved to San Jose for a long career at Lockheed Martin.

"Tuskegee is the number one producer of black doctors and engineers," said Braddock, who has lived in San Jose since 1970. "It's a place where you can really find out who you are, and what you can achieve. Failure is not an option."

Braddock acknowledged that it can be a challenge to convince Bay Area teenagers to move to the Deep South.

"Most of then have never been outside of California," Braddock said. "And a lot of them don't know their black history. But the faculty is so involved with the students, the bonding is almost parental. And by Thanksgiving, you're invited home for the holidays by friends in Georgia and Alabama."

In recent months, San Jose State has been rocked by allegations that students repeatedly hazed a black roommate. The defendants are accused of displaying a Confederate flag, writing a racial slur on a dry-erase board in the living room and repeatedly locking the victim, then 17, in his room and clamping a U-shaped bicycle lock around his neck.

"If there was any hazing or bullying going on, I would stand up and try to change the situation," said Anthony Johnson, 18, an East Palo Alto resident who attends Menlo Atherton High School. "But it definitely makes me stop and think" about whether he'd choose San Jose State if he had other options.

Johnson applied to SJSU and several other public universities in California, including Cal State Long Beach. But after attending the fair on Saturday, he's giving Dillard and Morehouse College in Atlanta, where he also applied, more consideration.

"I have not traveled outside of California, but I have a lot of family and relatives in the South," Johnson said. "I want to go out on my own and be away from home."